Alleged Illegal Asbestos Job at School Probed

The Los Angeles district attorney’s office said it is investigating an allegation of illegal removal of asbestos by Los Angeles Unified School District workers at Garfield High School in East Los Angeles.

Jan Chatten-Brown, a special assistant to Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner, said this week that the investigation is based on a complaint from the union representing district carpenters, but would not comment on the details of the case.

State law requires that asbestos--which is carcinogenic--be removed only by contractors specially licensed to handle the substance and that proper care be taken to contain the asbestos particles once they become loose or ‘friable.” Asbestos particles can lodge in the lungs and eventually cause lung cancer or other diseases.

However, Brook Hilton, a carpenter employed by the Los Angeles School District since 1981, told The Times that in at least one incident--at Garfield High--proper safeguards were ignored.

Hilton was among a crew of carpenters sent to Garfield on Oct. 4 to repair a ceiling above a stairwell that cracked during the Oct. 1 earthquake.

In the process of making the repair, Hilton said, workers discovered friable asbestos wrapped around steam pipes located in a crawl space above the ceiling.

Hilton said his foreman ignored a warning sign indicating the crawl space area contained asbestos. The foreman then instructed workers to remove the debris with sledgehammers and axes, deposit it in a wheelbarrow and throw it from a second-floor balcony into a trash bin on the ground below.

The asbestos was not dampened before removal, even though experts say that wetting down the material is necessary to prevent particles from becoming airborne, and the only protective gear worn by the workers were paper dust masks, Hilton said.

“I’ve never seen so much asbestos,” he said. “The stuff was just floating, going every place. It was the most irresponsible thing I’ve ever seen.”

Another district carpenter who worked on the job, Floyd Bortoluzzi, said he was covered with asbestos dust and that another carpenter suffered breathing difficulties.

“It was so dusty that it looked like smoke and the building was on fire,” Bortoluzzi said.

After half an hour, Hilton said he refused to continue working and was removed from the job. Other workers, including school custodians using brooms and dustpans, completed the cleanup.

Incident Confirmed

District spokesman Bill Rivera confirmed the incident.

“The carpenter foreman, in his zeal to get the job done, didn’t follow procedures,” he said. “He felt pressure to get the stairwell cleaned so school could be opened the next day.” The school was closed for several days after the earthquake in order to repair the damage.

Rivera said the foreman received a severe reprimand and steps have begun to demote him.

The employees involved were notified that they might have been exposed to asbestos. Of the 11 workers who were exposed, four were tested immediately, but the test results have not been received, he said.

Teachers have complained of eye and throat irritations at Garfield that they believe were caused by exposure to asbestos, said Catherine Carey, a spokeswoman for United Teachers-Los Angeles, the local teachers’ union. “Teachers had no idea there was asbestos there. But (the district) never alerted teachers and students at Garfield” of the possible exposure, she said.

Rivera said teachers were not notified because they were not in school when the incident occurred and could not have been exposed to asbestos particles.

Hilton said he has filed a grievance with the district through his union and also is suing the district for stress.

Rivera could not confirm that the attic area at Garfield had been posted with a warning sign, and he said he did not know if district officials were aware that asbestos was present in that site.